


we call it finally free

by chcckplease (heeyjuuuude)



Series: as the world keeps spinning round [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Not Beta Read, POV Original Character, Trans Character, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25949278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeyjuuuude/pseuds/chcckplease
Summary: Elodie Bittle-Zimmermann knows who she is, and she thinks she’s ready for her dads to know, too.or, Eric and Jack’s daughter comes out to them as trans.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle & Original Female Character(s), Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Jack Zimmermann & Original Female Character(s)
Series: as the world keeps spinning round [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886440
Comments: 16
Kudos: 118





	we call it finally free

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello! i promise i’m planning on getting that dexey fic up at some point, but unfortunately all of my fics seem to go up in either under 24 hours or over two months with no in between, so instead of the fic i’ve been writing for a month, have this instead. shoutout to the cricket crew for enabling me (not that it took much) and for putting up with me asking increasingly random questions.
> 
> title comes from le tigre’s 'viz,' which isn’t technically a coming out song but has strong coming out vibes.
> 
> EDIT: series title is from lucky by jason mraz and colbie caillat. i had wanted to do something by a queer artist, but like ... this song is about a pair of best friends who fell in love and are now together long distance, and that is literally my girls, so.
> 
> enjoy y’all!!

At eighteen years old, Elodie knows who she is—she’s the daughter of Eric and Jack Bittle-Zimmermann, and she’s a good soccer player, and she’s a better actress. She knows baking and cooking is in her veins and skating is, too, even if she never went competitive with it. She knows she’s going to Samwell University to major in sociology so she can become a social worker, and her brilliant, beautiful girlfriend Naomi, who she knows she is head over heels in love with, will be just forty five minutes away at Harvard, studying poli sci and generally being an actual genius.

She also knows that she’s trans, and she _thinks_ she’s ready to tell her dads.

She isn’t really worried about how they’ll respond. They’re queer, too, obviously, and have taken her along to pride events a few times, and have always been good about respecting peoples’ pronouns while there. They were even very good at correcting themselves from ‘Christine’ to ‘Chris’ when her friend had come out as nonbinary. Still, though—she inherited her papa’s anxiety, and with it his tendency to occasionally overthink more than is strictly necessary. She’s heard of stories where someone’s parents are fine with the idea of trans people in general only to flip upon hearing their own child is trans, and while she doesn’t actually believe that will apply to Dad and Papa, it doesn’t stop her from thinking about it when she’s lost in worst-case scenarios. 

She thinks she’s ready, though, _she does,_ so one night after dinner Elodie stops them from getting up and says, “There’s something I want to tell you.”

She watches as they exchange a glance, and Papa settles back into his seat without a word. They’ve noticed her being a little fidgety over the last few days, she’s pretty sure.

“Alright, sweetpea, go right ahead,” Dad tells her, meeting her gaze with wide eyes and a raised eyebrow. She takes a deep breath, chewing absently on her lower lip, and lets it out heavily through her nose. There’s a brief moment where she wonders, maybe a bit hysterically in a distant way, what she should be doing with her hands, and she moves them to clasp in front of her on the table, then into her lap again, and finally settles on tucking them under her thighs. It does nothing but make Papa’s lips twitch in amusement and Dad’s other eyebrow join the first, and apparently she’s been quiet long enough for her dad to get a little antsy. He opens his mouth to say something else, and she has a weird vision of him asking if Naomi is pregnant, and that’s enough to spur her into words.

“I’m trans. Uh, and a girl. A woman?”

Her eyes are on her empty plate now, evidently. There’s a little bit of the alfredo sauce she’d made from scratch slowly dripping off her dish, and as she moves to wipe it before the table is dirtied, Dad blurts out, “You are? Really?” and immediately bursts into tears.

She trades a startled look with Papa, who has his mouth open and was probably about to say something, and freezes with her napkin still on the edge of her plate. Her dad doesn’t need much of an excuse to cry, she knows, but still, this was not one of the outcomes she’d been prepared to handle. Long moments tick by, and Elodie finds herself watching and acutely aware that she should probably say something but not sure what words would fall out of her mouth. Before she can spiral, Dad looks up, brushing away a few tears, and looks a little surprised by whatever must be on her face.

“Oh, honey,” he says, voice watery, and reaches out a hand, a little wildly and nearly knocking over her water. “I’m sorry, sweetpea, it’s just—oh, c’mere.” His arm spreads wide, inviting, and her breath leaves her in a rush as she stumbles out of the chair she’d been perched on the edge of and around the corner to meet him as he stands. “Honey, honey, it’s okay. It’s—I’m sorry. Baby, hey.”

On his other side, Papa is making soothing noises, and has stood up, too, hovering a little awkwardly but running his fingers through the chin length waves of hair at the back of her head. She realizes distantly that she’s clutching at her dad and leaning into her papa’s touch, and that the shuddering breaths she can hear are probably her own. 

God, she’s a mess. 

She lets them hold her, but neither of them have _really_ responded, and it’s eating at her too much for her to relax into the warmth, so after maybe forty seconds she pulls away and brushes hard at her eyes.

“Please, um, say something?” she asks, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, because Dad’s been talking this whole time, but her papa has always been able to read her with ease, so he picks up on what she means immediately.

“We love you,” he says quickly, “and we will help you with transitioning as much or as little as you’d like—” He cuts himself off just as quickly, and she can hear the hole where her deadname would have fit, but that will have to be something they address later, because Dad is already grabbing at the end of the sentence and running with it.

“Yes, we will, of course we will,” he assures her, still a little teary. “I’m sorry, honey, I know me bawling was not what you were hoping for, I just … well.” Dad laughs, a little self deprecating. “I’m sure that must’ve not been fun. It’s just that—”

“Oh,” Pap interrupts, and when she glances over at him there’s a clear realization in his eyes. “You’ve always wanted a daughter.”

“He—what?” Elodie asks, blinking hard as she turns her head to stare at her dad. “Really?”

Papa huffs a small laugh. “He was convinced you were a girl during the pregnancy. He wouldn’t admit it, but when the doctor said you were a boy, he was kind of upset.”

“Well, I—” Dad interrupts, and then pauses. He brings a hand up to thumb at a tear trailing down Elodie’s cheek, a bright smile growing across his face. “I guess I was right, wasn’t I?” 

Elodie has to take a moment to process that, because she has a feeling that if she smiles any wider her face will crack. “You, um. Yeah, you were.”

“Oh, honey. I—thank you for telling us, sweetpea. So, um. You—what’s your name?”

He may actually be trying to kill her. This is somehow better than the best reaction she had thought of.

“Elodie. I don’t have a middle name? I kinda wanted your help picking one out.”

That sends Dad into another game of _let’s try very hard to pretend like I’m not about to cry,_ and Papa laughs a little.

“Elodie,” Papa says quietly, letting the soft syllables roll off his tongue, and she beams at him.

“Elodie,” Dad echoes, and wraps his arms around her again to pull her in tight. “That’s such a pretty name, honey.” 

Later that night, when her parents are sitting on the couch, she bends over from behind them to press kisses to their heads in goodnight, mindful of the full glass of water in her hand. As she straightens up, her dad turns to look at her and says, very warmly and very deliberately, “Night, Ellie.” 

When she shuts her bedroom door behind her a few moments later and leans against it heavily, she lets her forehead thunk against the door, eyes closing and lips easing into a smile that only tastes a little salty.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: about ten minutes after elodie says goodnight, eric sits up very suddenly and exclaims very loudly, ‘i told you naomi looks like a butch lesbian!’ (naomi, if you don’t remember, is elodie’s girlfriend.) elodie, who is still awake and on the phone with naomi, laughs very hard.
> 
> i’m not gonna lie, this came from a random headcanon and spiralled into a fic with lots of background that i couldn’t work in. if you’d like to see more of elodie, let me know! i have so many ideas that i’d love to share. you’re also more than welcome to come ask about her on my [tumblr](https://raygunn01.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> EDIT: you can also check out my tumblr for some more details about elodie and naomi, including picrews! check under the tags ‘elodie bittle zimmermann’ or ‘naomi padilla’


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